Trump’s DHS Responds To Rise In Extremism By Disbanding Domestic Terror Unit

Kirstjen Nielsen says DHS is alert to domes­tic ter­ror threat. Law enforce­ment sources say the agency has gone “silent.”

The Department of Homeland Security has dis­band­ed a unit of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who mon­i­tored domes­tic ter­ror­ism threats even as depart­ment offi­cials admit that the threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism is grow­ing.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has reas­signed a group of intel­li­gence ana­lysts who focused on domes­tic threats, result­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant drop in reports and analy­sis about threats from extrem­ists and white suprema­cists, The Daily Beast report­ed. Local law enforce­ment offi­cials told the out­let they are no longer receiv­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion from DHS since the unit was dis­band­ed last year.

“It’s espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic giv­en the growth in right-wing extrem­ism and domes­tic ter­ror­ism we are see­ing in the U.S. and abroad,” a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial told The Daily Beast.
The move came after new Intelligence and Analysis chief David Glawe reor­ga­nized the divi­sion.
A DHS spokesper­son told the out­let that it works with oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies to gath­er “threat infor­ma­tion regard­less of a threat actor’s ide­ol­o­gy” and shares that infor­ma­tion with oth­er agen­cies.
“The same peo­ple are work­ing on the issues,” a senior DHS offi­cial insist­ed. “We just restruc­tured things to be more respon­sive to the I&A cus­tomers with­in DHS and in local com­mu­ni­ties while reduc­ing over­lap with what the FBI does. We actu­al­ly believe we are far more effec­tive now.”
But Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Mike Abdeen told The Daily Beast that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been “most­ly silent” for the past six months despite pre­vi­ous­ly send­ing his office a sig­nif­i­cant amount of infor­ma­tion.
“It’s been very qui­et late­ly,” Abdeen said. “It’s changed with the new admin­is­tra­tion. It doesn’t seem to be as robust, as active, as impor­tant — it is impor­tant, I’m sure, but it’s not a pri­or­i­ty. It doesn’t seem like engage­ment, out­reach, and pre­ven­tion are seen as a pri­or­i­ty as we used to see in the past. There were round­table meet­ings in the past, there was more activ­i­ty, more train­ing, more sem­i­nars. Now it seems like it’s gone away.”

As a result of the “reor­ga­ni­za­tion,” offi­cials said the office must now coör­di­nate with the FBI to share infor­ma­tion with local law enforcement.“While I can­not speak to what is going on at DHS I&A today, the analy­sis pro­vid­ed by I&A per­son­nel on domes­tic extrem­ism was essen­tial dur­ing my tenure at DHS,” for­mer act­ing head of Intelligence and Analysis John Cohen told the out­let. “Based on the cur­rent threat envi­ron­ment, I believe those same efforts are essen­tial today.”
Disbanding the domes­tic ter­ror­ism intel­li­gence unit is a curi­ous move after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a speech at Auburn University last month that her depart­ment would work to pre­vent attacks like the one in New Zealand, where a white nation­al­ist gun­man killed 50 peo­ple at two mosques.
“We, too, have seen the face of such evil with attacks in places such as Charlottesville, Pittsburgh and Charleston,” Nielsen said. “I want to make one thing very clear: We will not per­mit such hate in the home­land.”
Read more here: https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​4​/​0​2​/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​d​h​s​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​d​s​-​t​o​-​r​i​s​e​-​i​n​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​m​-​b​y​-​d​i​s​b​a​n​d​i​n​g​-​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​-​u​n​it/